They earned front-row tickets to this morning.”

Brenda lowered her pen and looked at me across the table.

“Your mother spent twenty minutes on the phone with the desk sergeant insisting that your brother’s business school award was the only family event on today’s schedule.”

“Let her keep believing that until nine forty-five,” I said.

Brenda set her pen down next to the blue checkbook file on the table.

“My father was an NCO for twenty-two years,” she said quietly.